On the Shows 5

As for the origins, since they are rather obscure and unknown to many of our people, they had to be investigated from no other source than the works of heathen literature. There are many authors who have published treatises on this subject. By them the origin of the games is handed down thus. Timaeus reports that Lydians, migrating from Asia, settled in Etruria under the leadership of Tyrrhenus, who had yielded to his brother in a contest for the kingdom. So in Etruria, among the other rites of their superstitions, they also instituted shows in the name of religion. From there the Romans sent for performers and borrowed from them the season and the name, so that players (ludii) were called after the Lydians. But although Varro derives ludii from ludus, that is, from play, just as they also called the Luperci ludii because they run about playing, still he assigns that play of the young men to festival days, temples, and religious rites. No more, then, about the reason for the name, since the reason for the thing is idolatry. For when games in general were called Liberalia, they plainly proclaimed the honor of Father Liber. For they were first held by country people for Liber, on account of the benefit they ascribe to him for having shown them the gift of wine. Next, the games called Consualia, which at first honored Neptune; for they also call him Consus. Then Romulus named the Equirria, from horses, for Mars; though they also assign the Consualia to Romulus, on the ground that he dedicated them to Consus, the god, as they would have it, of counsel: the counsel, namely, by which he then devised the rape of the Sabine maidens as wives for his soldiers. An upright counsel indeed, and even now just and lawful among the Romans themselves, not to say before God! For this too adds to the stain of the origin, so that you should not think good what took its beginning from evil: from shamelessness, violence, and hatred, from a fratricide founder, a son of Mars. And even now an altar to that Consus is sunk underground in the circus at the first turning-posts, with an inscription of this kind: “Consus mighty in counsel, Mars in war, the Lares in …” The public priests sacrifice at it on the Nones of July, and the flamen of Quirinus and the virgins on the twelfth day before the Kalends of September. Next the same Romulus instituted games to Jupiter Feretrius on the Tarpeian hill, which Piso reports were called the Tarpeian and Capitoline games; after him Numa Pompilius held games for Mars and for Robigo (for they have even invented a goddess of rust); then Tullus Hostilius, then Ancus Martius, and the rest. Which of them instituted which games, in what order, and to what idols, is set down in Suetonius Tranquillus, or in those from whom Tranquillus took it. But this will be enough to establish the guilt of their origin in idolatry.